Who Is Don Kohn?

President Barack Obama Wednesday threw a third name into the mix for the increasingly hot race to be the next Federal Reserve chairman: Donald Kohn.

Bloomberg News

Former Fed Vice Chairman Donald Kohn

Mr. Obama mentioned Mr. Kohn’s name during a closed-door session with Democratic lawmakers, along with the two people widely considered to be the front-runners for the job: Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Janet Yellen, who currently holds the No. 2 spot at the Fed, behind Chairman Ben Bernanke. Mr. Bernanke is expected to step down when his term expires at the end of January.

Mr. Kohn, 70, has been included in many lists of second-tier possibilities in the parlor-game of who Mr. Obama would pick to replace Mr. Bernanke, but he hasn’t gained as much attention as the two perceived front-runners.

Like other former Fed officials, he also went on the Wall Street speaking circuit after leaving the central bank, offering insights for per-appearance fees that exceeded his monthly salary at the Fed. The Journal reported in 2011 that he earned fees in the range of $40,000 per appearance and that his views were widely sought after on Wall Street eager for information on the outlook for the Fed’s easy-money programs.

Mr. Kohn was vice chairman of the Fed — the post now held by Ms. Yellen — when the 2008 financial crisis struck, and he was deeply involved in the Fed’s response. He was at the table for every critical decision made by Mr. Bernanke and other top officials. “Don is the most important nonchairman member of the board in the history of the Fed,” Laurence Meyer, a former Fed governor, said in a 2009 Wall Street Journal profile of Mr. Kohn.

Mr. Kohn is a respected technocrat who — unlike Ms. Yellen and Mr. Summers — has never served in a Democratic (or Republican, for that matter) administration, and he has a reputation inside the Fed for helping to build consensus and smooth ruffled feathers between Washington and the regional Fed banks. Mr. Kohn was one of Mr. Bernanke’s trusted lieutenants during the crisis, but is known for his caution, and might be less aggressive in using the Fed’s monetary muscle than either Mr. Summers or Ms. Yellen

Mr. Kohn spent 40 years within the Federal Reserve system. He started out on the staff of the Kansas City Fed in 1970, right out of graduate school, when Mr. Bernanke was still in high school. He moved to the Fed’s headquarters in Washington in 1975 and continued to rise up the ranks.

In 1987, Mr. Kohn became director of the Fed’s division of monetary affairs — a key position that involves coordinating Fed deliberations on interest-rate moves — around the time Alan Greenspan became chairman. Mr. Kohn became one of Mr. Greenspan’s closest advisers.

In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Mr. Kohn to the seven-member board of governors, a rare instance of a staff member becoming a policy maker. In 2006, Mr. Kohn became the Fed’s vice chairman.

A Maryland native, Mr. Kohn for a period of his Fed career was known for riding his bicycle to work, with his suit pants tucked into black socks. He’s a tad infamous among fellow central bankers for the grueling hikes he leads at the annual Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Some call it the Don Kohn “Death March.”

He retired from the Fed in the summer of 2010 but has kept active in central bank circles. He is a senior fellow at the Brookings institution and a member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee, a panel formed in 2011 to look for threats to the financial system.

About Real Time Economics

Real Time Economics offers exclusive news, analysis and commentary on the U.S. and global economy, central bank policy and economics. Send news items, comments and questions to the editors and reporters below or email realtimeeconomics@wsj.com.